


The Rungs of Me Be Under, Under You

by ChemFishee



Category: Castle
Genre: 2013 Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:59:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChemFishee/pseuds/ChemFishee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years ago, he wrote it out for the world to see, that allowing him to burrow under her skin would remind her of what it is to be <i>alive</i>.<br/>(September 2013)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rungs of Me Be Under, Under You

**Author's Note:**

> Title courtesy of Purity Ring’s “Fineshrine”. Spoilers through 5.24 “Watershed” and _Heat Wave_. 
> 
> Unbeta’d, so all mistakes are mine and mine alone.

The entire history of human desire takes seventy minutes to tell.  
Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.  
\-- _Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_ , Richard Siken

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we see in them.  
\-- _No Man Is an Island_ , Thomas Merton

You’ll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You’ll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or worse, you’ll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you’ve got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.  
\-- _House of Leaves_ , Mark Z. Danielewski

When she thinks about Castle, she thinks about his hands first.

She would know those hands anywhere. 

And what they are capable of. She thinks of that, too. 

She thinks of the tips of his fingers slotted into the subtly worn grooves of his laptop keyboard, the lower leg of the ‘K’ already worn off, deftly unraveling the complexities of his fictional characters’ world. 

She thinks of the slight protrusion of his left pinky and the way it catches hers every morning when he passes her her coffee.

She thinks of his palm cradling her neck, his other hand hot and sticky with her blood.

She thinks of the callus on his right middle finger and how it slots into the interstitial spaces of her rib cage, trips up the notches of her spine, settles on the wing of her hip to draw a more permanent tattoo.

 

-

 

At first she thinks it’s a bruise, angry-mad and smudging at the edges. Kate touches two fingers to it reverentially and then presses harder when she feels the telltale pebbling of aged ink.

Castle rolls onto his side, his bored yawn belied by the brightness of his eyes. He doesn’t stop her exploration; he lets her look. 

She wants to ask about it, wants to know its significance. Instead, she hums low in her throat, lips curling into a smile. “Drunken debauchery or lost bet?”

Castle presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth and then two more. He rolls her under him, and her hand claws the top of his thigh. She knows he gets off on that, half moon indents at the top of long scratches that will fade by morning.

He tongues the thumbs-width sparrow at the top of her rib cage.

 

-

 

“I know your secret.”

Beckett stops writing, pen hovering over the next field in her paperwork. The hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention.

Castle slides into his chair beside her desk. He pulls his phone out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

She exhales, not realizing she’d been holding her breath. “Is this another one of your stalker apps?”

“No, this is so much better.” He slides the phone over to her. “KBecks was apparently a Captain Max/Lieutenant Chloe shipper.”

Kate pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, looks a challenge at him. “How’d you even find this?”

Castle leans back, steeples his fingers. “You know the fansite is still active.”

She shakes her head, shoves the phone off her form.

 

-

 

“’ _Good_ , she thought, as the wind gathered up her hair. _No one will see my tears._ ’ How does wind gather up hair? I’m just curious.” 

“Oh. You’re telling me how to do my job.” Castle looks like he can’t decide whether to strangle or devour her. Devour might be winning but only slightly.

“Irritating, isn’t it?”

Martha and Alexis interrupt whatever retort was on the tip of his tongue. 

Kate rolls her eyes at her own clichéd turn of phrase. Because that’s the essence of her argument. She wants to tell him that people don’t read mystery novels for the eminently quotable lines. Rather, they want to dive into taut pacing, dimensional characters, and a twist in the plot. They want escapism they won’t feel guilty about; they don’t want the girlfriend to be the killer. 

So maybe he could stand to un-purple his prose a bit. Drag it back to a pink the same shade as her dress.

“Well let’s just hope Nikki Heat does as well.”

That catches Kate’s attention again. “Nikki Heat?”

“The character he’s basing on you,” Martha explains.

“Nikki. Heat. Can I talk to you for a second?”

 

-

 

“I mean, Nikki Heat? That’s the name of a stripper working a dive off an interstate in Oklahoma. The one who lifts the wallet of an overeager teenager who drinks Bud Light bottles and thinks, ‘She _really_ likes me.’”

“Honey, he’s writing a story about you. And if you’re lucky, maybe he’ll write more than one.”

Beckett stops her furious click-clack pacing at the former Mrs. Williamson’s hip. “He’s not writing a story about me.”

Lanie notches her eyebrow. Beckett worries her bottom lip. “No one wants to read about me.”

“Mmhmm. He just having you write his character backstory then?” Lanie reaches for her scalpel.

 

-

 

Nikki. Diminutive of Nicole. Greek origin. Meaning people of victory.

 

-

 

She spends the first month of the interminable, immoveable, summer _after_ holed up in her apartment. 

She stops buzzing Josh into her building within the first two weeks. She can’t tell him that she hates the way he looks at her now, that she doesn’t want his pity or his sympathy. She can’t listen to him bring up the subject of her job and how it’s killing her one more time. It’s all too much for her.

She grows her hair out, in the absence of growing a beard. 

(After three months, the ends cover the edges of her scar.)

In the nightmare hours before the sun turns Manhattan watery gray, she reads _Catch-22_ , her chest prickling.

She won’t allow herself the comfort of Castle’s books this time. 

 

-

 

He walks his fingers along the spine of her books. He doesn’t comment, makes no mention of her grouping his novels together on the second shelf, eye level, simply catalogs her library.

Kate bites her lip, curls her hands at her sides. She’s nervous, and she doesn’t know why.

He chuckles, soft. “Of course.”

Her pulls her copy of _A Dame to Kill For_ off the shelf.

 

-

 

People do horrible things to each other when they think no one is watching.

 

-

 

They end up across the bed, legs hanging over the edge, Kate on her stomach and Castle tucked into her side, scattering kisses over her shoulders.

His fingers scale the mountains and plunder the valleys of her spine. His palm skims the curve of her waist, and she flinches, draws her elbows in sharp. He does it again, and she gets her arms under her, gains leverage, glares. He hooks his chin over her shoulder and does it again.

Kate can’t stop the laughter bubbling up as she tries to squirm away.

 

-

 

Dr. Burke crosses his legs. “Tell me about your partner.”

Kate huffs a small laugh. “Castle? First off, he’s a writer, not a cop. But he would make a good cop, great even. He’s smart. Works hard but doesn’t want anyone to know that. He’s not at all practical and yet…”

“Okay, I know what he does. But what’s he like?”

Kate loops her sweater cuff over hr thumb, fingers curling into a fist. “He’s intrusive. Astoundingly inquisitive. He picks at people like they’re a Gordian knot just waiting to unravel.”

“And how long have you been together?”

Her shoulders hunch, defenses up. She picks at a pill on her sweater. “You know there have been, uh… There have been breaks. But about three years, I guess.”

“And how do you feel about him?”

Kate rolls a shrug. “I…”

“Do you love him?”

“What?”

Burke catches her eye, holds it. “I asked if you love him.”

 

-

 

Sometimes - _often_ \- she lets herself consider it, in an idle, mindless sort of way.

She thinks about him and his bed. About warm sunlight and the sounds of Sunday mornings spilling into the room. About him being adventurous, playful, _loud_. About gathering the pieces of him back together, _after_ , to take them apart again.

There she would call him Rick – or at least try to – and she would be Kate, not Beckett and certainly not Nikki. 

 

-

 

His mouth latches over her fluttering pulse. A wide hand covers her hip, pulling her to cradle against him, his weight on top of her and holding her down.

His name gets lost in the space between them. 

(The names we choke on matter.)

 

-

 

Castle was right. 

Four years ago, he wrote it out for the world to see, that allowing him to burrow under her skin would remind her of what it is to be _alive_.

Kate reads the passage again, marveling at the surety of his words, the confidence and subtle wit on display.

 _Smug bastard_ , she thought.

 

-

 

It’s a cliché for a man to change himself for a woman, and even more of one for a woman to change herself for a man.

She knows this.

Kate doesn’t think she’s changed _because of_ Castle, nor has she changed _for_ Castle. Not entirely.

 

-

 

She hasn’t yet asked him where he sees this going, skirting around the conversation. She thinks things and then swallows them down.

Kate shakes her head. Sometimes she wonders how the two of them ever work a successful interrogation. They’re two stunted humans who get awkward every time they try to express themselves.

It’s funny, she thinks, in a tragic sort of way.

 

-

 

“When I was 17, I didn’t know what it felt like to love a boy. I thought I did.”

“The songs made sense?”

She slants a glance at him. There’s no smirk – surprisingly – just the naked joy he gets every time she shares a piece of her life before she met him. B.C.

“All the songs made sense.” She smiles, small and indulgent. “Especially ‘Glycerine.’ God, I was obsessed with that song.”

He lets the silence stretch, waits for her to fill it. Kate takes a sip of her milkshake, cheeks hollowing as a strawberry gets stuck in the straw.

“Anyway, I didn’t know what it felt like to love a boy. But I knew what it was like to want one. That part’s easy. That part’s physical.”

“That’s the one we want to believe matters most.” She considers him from underneath her lashes. “What was his name?”

“Tom.” She’s smiling openly now, caught in the remembrance of things past. “He had this green flannel shirt I would steal after his band practiced. And I’d sleep in it. My mom would get so mad. It made my hair smell like cloves. She thought I was smoking. Oh, and he drove this orange ’68 Goat. I thought he was my own Jordan Catalano.”

“Did you dye your hair Crimson Glow and listen to Buffalo Tom? Oh! Did the band give themselves some horrible non sequitur name?”

“No.” She tucks her hair behind her ears and takes another sip of milkshake. “He played Pearl Jam… ‘Black’… the first time we had sex.” 

Kate pauses, lets it expand, watches the realization dawn on his face. “I was obsessed with that song, too,” she says, barely above a whisper.

She tucks her chin into her chest, swallowing the rest of what she wants to say. Castle catches her pinky with his.

 

-

 

Kate’s addicted to telling stories and having them matter, matter to him.

 

-

 

She pulls up his name on her contacts list, thumb hovering over his number. Kate can’t bring herself to push it, though. 

He is too much for her right now, and there is no kind or gentle or understanding way to make that known.

 

-

 

Love means always saying you’re sorry.

Fuck Ryan O’Neal anyway.

 

-

 

They make it as far as the rug in his study. 

She catalogs him – golden dusting of hair across his softening middle, smudged black ink near the juncture of hip and thigh, bitten red lips.

Castle curls a hand around the wing of her shoulder blade, the other cupping her ass. He lifts her, slightly, and then those same lips are writing out a promise along her collarbone. Her sweat-slick knees dig into the soft white rug.

The angle has shifted, too shallow for her to do anything more than swivel her hips; there is no leverage to be gained. His thumb trips over her clit.

Kate loses her balance, arms looping around his neck to hold her upright. The telltale heat of rug burn licks at her fingertips. He’s sure to bitch about that tomorrow.

She digs her nails in as he pulls her closer, deeper. Castle gasps and moans, low and broken, like all the words have been stripped out of him.

 

-

 

“Gina gave me a copy of _On Writing_ after Meredith left. I’d blown every deadline for six months. I didn’t even finish an outline.”

He lifts his coffee mug to his lips, blows a slow ripple across the surface. “I think she was afraid I was writing porn instead.”

Beckett slants a gaze left, searching for one of his tells. Castle raises his eyebrows. “And were you?”

 

-

 

Castle brushes her hair over her shoulder, exposing her back to him. The expanse of sun-kissed skin, crooked shoulder blades, vertebral bumps meandering in a mostly straight line and dipping below the waistband of her jeans. He presses a kiss above the band of her bra; she fumbles the hooks, and he laughs into her skin.

His fingers curl over the wings of her hipbones, bracketing her body in parentheses.

She reaches for her handcuffs.

 

-

 

In April, after tax day, Captain Montgomery gathers the homicide detectives to present the previous year’s statistics for the precinct, Manhattan, and the city at large.

Royce told her a lifetime ago that it was their family bonding time. And then he ordered her another whiskey.

The purpose of these meetings isn’t to tell them to only look at loved ones and known associates when they get to their next scene.

It’s just that, if someone is stabbed, it’s personal.

 

-

 

Here’s the thing about most homicides – they’re not particularly exotic. In fact, they tend to fall into two categories: 1) an argument escalates, or 2) victim and perp meet through random coincidence.

Just because motives tend to be unimaginative – often terrifyingly mundane – doesn’t make their job any easier.

 

-

 

“I can’t believe you totally copped out and chose Batman. Too easy and safe, Castle.” 

“Then tell me, Detective, who should I want to be?”

“Nite Owl.”

“First or second?”

She considers him for a moment. “Second. You’re still not a cop.” 

Castle follows her out of Comicadia. “I find it ridiculously hot when you say things like that. Not about not being a cop. The other stuff.”

Kate ducks her head. She doesn’t exactly know what to do when he says things like that.

 

-

 

It has the same overly tacky texture as cheap body butter; it’s not entirely unpleasant. The bristles catch and tickle as he paints another line around the nape of her neck.

She shudders involuntarily, draws her elbows closer to her side.

“Don’t move.”

Kate rolls her eyes but tries to hold herself still while he dips the brush in the cerulean paint again.

 

-

 

Kate bends over to rub her feet dry. The pain is sharp, reflexive behind her eyes.

She catches the edges of her reflection. The mottled purple bruising, the twig-thin scratches. Her own skin reads like a map, a diagram of futility crisscrossed with tiny roads leading nowhere.

 

-

 

“That’s gonna leave a nasty scar. Every time you see it, think of me.”

Kate Beckett feels something loosen in her that shouldn’t have loosened.

A stitch come undone.

 

-

 

All the memories she carries with her seem only secondary to the moment they get.

 

-

 

Kate grins, shark-sharp, setting her phone on the edge of the bed and crawling across to where he is. She leans in close enough to kiss, ghosting her lips against his.

“Can’t be jealous.” She shifts her weight, trailing a hand up his outer thigh. “I have a tendency to get what I want.” Her fingers change course, his hips rock up unconsciously.

“So impatient.” She tuts.

Castle notches a semi-annoyed brow. “You’re such a tease. But you know that.”

Kate straightens, considers. “Take these off. But leave the watch on.”

He hooks his thumbs under the elastic waistband. She leans across him, reaching for her phone. Her breast brushes his face, and then her nipple is between his teeth. His underwear still mostly on.

The first (accidental) picture is of his armpit, her knee, the outline of his ribs, blurred.

(Kate doesn’t delete it. And of all the photos they take as the heavy rain clouds sponge up the last bits of light, it’s the only one that makes her blush.)

 

-

 

“Castle, this is my life. _Mine_. And it’s real. You can’t edit it like one of your novels.”

 

-

 

We are all revisionists; we revise ourselves.

 

-

 

Kate gets shot at more than she expected.

It only counts once.

 

-

 

Burke perches on the edge of his desk. “I don’t think you’ve betrayed your mom. But what have you done for her daughter?”

“Do you ever get tired of asking questions you already know the answer to?”

 

-

 

She smiles, which should ruin the kiss but doesn’t. It’s supposed to be a good morning kiss because that’s what Kate does. But Castle turns it into a _good morning_ kiss, dipping his tongue into her mouth and rubbing his fingers over the soft cotton of her panties.

Kate’s still grinning when she dives back in for another kiss, nails scraping the grain of his morning stubble. “Hi.”

 

-

 

Castle is a force of nature.

He batters her reinforced defenses like a hurricane, redrawing her boundaries until all her maps are outdated.

He unpacks her life like a tornado, cardboard boxes rent asunder and secrets scattered in the wind.

He engulfs her like a wildfire, crackling and hypnotic and dangerous in allure.

Derrick Storm and Nikki Heat. It's not just about titular puns.

 

-

 

Kate enjoys storyboarding with him because that is something they’ve always been surprisingly good at.

But she doesn’t like to watch him work. His actual job, that is. 

It’s too intimate.

Instead, because she is both moderately patient and exceedingly selfish, Kate waits the requisite year to read his latest love letter to her. She spends a weekend curled in her Eames chair with an advance copy and a bottle of wine.

She stares at her naked doppelgänger on the cover, searching for clues in the art, for the first hour. She knows he spends weeks agonizing over the design and wants to give them a modicum of the consideration he does.

 

-

 

She thinks she is as close to understanding him as she’ll ever be.

(She only knows him as much as she knows herself.)

 

-

 

Beckett has learned, after nearly a decade on the force, that everyone who keeps a secret itches to tell it.

This is Castle’s way of telling.

 

-

 

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

 

-

 

The first time Castle saves her life, Beckett realizes she’s setting a dangerous precedent. She knows he’ll do it again, blindly. And she knows that she’ll be leading him into that situation.

It’s not healthy to rely on him to save her from herself.

 

-

 

A bag of frozen peas obscures most of his face. His swollen lip catches on his front teeth, pulling at the edges of the scabbed-over cut.

“Dun thay you old e nocco.”

Beckett kicks her feet up on the coffee table, stretches her toes. She cards her fingers through his hair, tracing random patterns the same as she draws on the top of her Post-Its. He catches her hand and laces their fingers together.

“Sorry.” And then, “I won’t. Promise.”

Castle uses their conjoined hands to lift one corner off his eye.

“Dun thay anythin.”

She bites back a grin.

 

-

 

“You aren’t taking me seriously.”

She tilts her head towards him. “A real psychic? C’mon, Castle. Didn’t your grandparents have a mind-reading act?”

“Reading someone’s thoughts isn’t the same as predicting the future, Beckett.”

“They didn’t really read people’s thoughts, Castle.”

“True. But the audience believed they could.”

“And this guy can’t actually predict the future. He uses cues, just like they did, to lead people along. Whatever he says is just vague enough that it can be twisted to sound like he predicted it when they remember it in the future.”

Castle looks back at the picture of their victim. “Don’t you believe in anything besides logic?”

Kate caps the dry erase marker.

 

-

 

“Why would you tell a story if you don’t know the end?”

“If you wanted a beginning, a middle, and an end, I have twenty seven novels you can choose from.”

Their conversations have been bony elbows and knobby knees for months now.

 

-

 

When a heart is taken from a body, autorhythmic cells self-generate action potentials to keep it pumping. No external (nerve) stimulation needed. 

When your heart is torn from your chest, it’s still beating.

It’s just not you giving the signals anymore.

Or maybe it should be: It’s not just getting your signals anymore.

 

-

 

Beckett died.

And then Kate came back.

 

-

 

The top sheet got yanked loose when they simply grabbed and pulled all the covers off. Somehow, though, Castle managed to snag it off the floor without ever actually leaving the bed. It's now wrapped loose and low on his hips, hair leading southward poking out the top.

Castle props himself on one elbow. His hair is mussed, his skin is still stained pink and his mouth is kiss-swollen. He looks, in a word, _satisfied_.

Kate leans against the headboard, elbows digging into the only pillow still on the bed. Her pale feet brush against his arm, and he reaches across his body to run the flat of a nail up the bottom of her foot.

Beckett curls her toes.

 

-

 

She wonders if she ever had a chance to begin with. 

She doesn’t understand why she feels like she’s standing still, stuck between ideas of moving forward and _not_. She’s not afraid of the things she might resign herself to, the nightmares of the years before and the uncertainty of what’s to come.

So Kate settles into meeting him halfway. She’s bewildered and curious, open, willing to work a little at this. Just a little bit.

Beginning or end, a chance is still somewhat of a chance. 

 

-

 

“Point is, we don’t have the answers. We just have to live with the questions. And find our way.”

 

-


End file.
